What to Watch for From the Fed

Oct 29, 2013 4:46 pm ET

By Victoria McGrane and Jon Hilsenrath

The Federal Reserve concludes its two-day policy meeting Wednesday, and while no policy changes are expected, officials are likely to debate what to do next and when to do it. The official Fed statement, to be released at 2 p.m. EDT, may contain elements that bear close watching:

1) No taper or other substantive changes in policy. After their decision to stand pat on the Fed’s $85 billion-per-month bond-buying program at the September policy meeting, officials have no good reason to change course this time around. The government shutdown and brinkmanship over the nation’s borrowing limit injected new uncertainty into the economy, hurt confidence and muddied the incoming data for the next few months. The September jobs report, the latest the Fed saw before this meeting, showed mediocre payroll employment growth.

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